


cant spell carolina without car(e)

by sajere1



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon Compliant, Carolina Appreciation, Gen, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2442047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your friend, Caboose?” You glance back up to find Grey pulling the frayed edges of her hijab out of her eyelashes, her gaze dead set on your face. “He thinks that we’re all in a videogame. And the orange guy, Grif, he keeps talking about how the sun never moves. How he only ever seems to go to the same locations with slight differences. How we can never drop guns.”</p><p>You shift uncomfortably and she restarts, smile alighting on her face. “But really, I’m more curious about what you think,” she says brightly. “So let’s talk some, Agent.”</p><p> [or: the only person better at psychoanalyzing than grey is carolina herself, but never for good cause]</p>
            </blockquote>





	cant spell carolina without car(e)

When you were a kid – pre-freelancer, pre-college dropout, pre-angsty bullshit emo afternoons – your father had a supercomputer that played videogames with you when you couldn’t get to sleep.

Dad said he made it in college, back before he and Mom had met in the pre-mortum inevitability that was Space Denny’s in the dead of the morning. He based it on 19-year-old him. It was made for lonely, older Dad, but it fit lonely, younger you just fine. Sometimes it got angry and hurt itself. But that was okay. You were great at rewiring it so it wouldn’t short circuit again – one of those inherent traits that Dad accidentally pounded into your genetics.

You were also great at video games. That’s what the program always said, anyway, and to be fair all the video games were downloads from your dad’s obscure hipster phase, some of which were at least a few hundred years old, so it wasn’t exactly an unbiased source. But you were good at them – good at Banjo Kazooie, good at Call of Duty, at the Homestuck game and the RWBY game and Destiny and OFF and anything in between.

You may not have been good at talking to people. You may not have been good at keeping your parents out of war. But you were great at video games.

At least, that’s what Alpha always told you.

+x+

“Epsilon,” you hear yourself say in the present almost like it’s a dream, kneeling over a soldier with dark skin and a lovely splay of blonde hair ringing beneath her expression. Her dog tag reads _Volleyball,_ and she’s wearing purple eyeshadow that glitters. She’s drooling blood from her teeth and her nose. “Vitals?”

There’s a moment where your mind seems to go blank – side effect of having an A.I.; it’s like North always said, you get used to it after a while – and then Epsilon says, in the voice of a computer you told your secrets to as a child, “She’s alive and stable. Broken nose and a couple of teeth knocked out, but otherwise fine.”

You sigh out your nose and stand, your calves aching where you’ve bent over soldiers’ bodies, not all of whom have been as lucky as Volleyball apparently has. “Turn her on her side so she doesn’t choke on the blood,” you instruct the small team that Kimball sent with you. “Then let’s move on.”

“Shouldn’t we take her to the medibay?” pipes up a hesitant girl in maroon armor whose lisp easily quiets all three of her companions. “If she broke her nose, she’ll need help.”

“She can walk herself.” You try to keep your voice authoritative as you turn to look at the Lieutenants waddling behind you like ducks, three of which seem to be arguing about some sort of pronunciation difficulty – but the fourth, the girl, is facing you with her chin held high, even as you watch her fists tremble at her sides. Your words soften despite yourself. “There are others who can’t. We should save our strength for them.”

The girl – woman – pauses, the clench in her knuckles relaxing. “Oh,” she says, voice soft, and then – “shouldn’t we at least mark her so we now we’ll already have checked?”

“I’ll remember,” Epsilon reassures from his place on your shoulder. “I’ve got our path marked down, and I’ve catalogued everything. We’ll come back to here when we’re done.”

The fight seems to go out of her as she glances down at the prone figure behind her visor. You wonder if they’re a Thing. You berate yourself for making assumptions. “Oh,” she repeats, quiet. “Okay.”

You consider reassuring her. Would that be too weird? You barely know each other – what would be appropriate?

You hesitate, consider resting a hand on her shoulder and soothing her shaking limbs, and – finally – spin on your heel and curtly motion for them to follow you.

Epsilon is silent in your head. He never knows how to react when you think like this. When you were first adjusting to sharing your brain – different from Eta and Iota, because Epsilon is (you think) just one AI, and he remembers everything – he used to pick through Alpha’s memories and imitate the way your lovely hardwired friend had dealt with you when you were twelve. But you are not twelve anymore and Epsilon is not Alpha the same way Tex was never Mother, so he learned to let you stare into your own mind and hate it without his intervention.

“Come on,” you call sharply at the lieutenants, who are still trailing behind. You catch something about pandas and eucalyptus before they trip over their heels to catch up to you. You can hear Epsilon grunt mentally and figure you’ve both made it out of your respective blank spots, though your stomach still pangs as you deliberate over whether you should’ve said something.

“How many more do we have to go through?” the soldier with teal trimming whines, stammering out a “ma’am” as you sharply turn your gaze to him.

You turn to look at the expansive area of the capital. So many died before the message went through – so many died _while_ the message went through, the war raging so wildly that there wasn’t even a moment to discover its falseness – that in between the dotted clumps of those wearily talking or dealing with wounds, you can see bodies littering the ground all the way to the opposite wall and into the rooms on either side.

“As many as it takes,” you say simply before turning to the next body on Epsilon’s path and kneeling down, examining the dog tag with _Ganoosh_ roughly engraved. “Epsilon. Vitals?”

+x+

It wasn’t until you were nine years old that Mom started to think that something might be wrong with you.

“Your mom thinks something might be wrong with you,” Alpha said, and that was how you found out – in the middle of kicking his ass at Mortal Kombat, because he’d found some way to reroute the CPU’s settings to his own coding and honestly, he was kind of shit at fighting games. Incredible at baseball, though. You hadn’t even known that video games _allowed_ a second inning mercy rule. “Don’t tell her I said that,” he added hastily, failing to dodge a blow to his character’s leg in his sudden concern; the blow cost him the round and you dropped your controller, throwing your arms up in a victory cry.

“What’s she worried about?” you asked, letting your shoulders relax as your arms fell back to your sides. You took the moment of peace to adjust your hat – a baseball cap, worn backwards as always, with the _Church Industries_ logo the only color variation on the cyan seams. Your grandma Patricia gave it to you when you were six. None of your friends had ever seen what you looked like without it. This was at least in part because you had only two friends, not counting Alpha.

“She thinks you’re antisocial,” he told you as you started up the next round, flicking through the character choices with your thumb. “Says you always stay in your room when she’s home.”

“Maybe I she were _home_ more than once a year,” you muttered, petulant.

You imagined that if Alpha were a person, he would’ve had his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I’m not taking sides, I’m just passing along the info. Figured you’d like to hear.”

You sighed. “I know,” you reassured him, calm as you knock him out again almost immediately. “Sorry.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Alpha says, voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Anyway, your Mom’s wrong. You’re not in your room alone. If you were, I’d get shut down once in a while. So, y’know.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Yeah,” you said. “She’s just being weird.”

“I’m not telling her you said that because she’s terrifying,” Alpha reported and you laughed, despite everything.

+x+

It’s been a while since you’ve worn your hat. About ten years, you think. You wore it for a long time – definitely late into your teens, and even at the beginning of your brief attempt at university before you abandoned your degree for the military.

In retrospect, there were a couple things that made you give up wearing it.

First was the death of Grandma Patricia, which left Dad the company and soiled the logo permanently.

Second was the _funeral_ of Grandma Patricia, where you had a panic attack in the bathroom because your father had taken away Alpha the night before and there were too many people and you fucked up.

Third was when Father renamed _Church Industries._ You finally hung your hat on your bedside table for good when Father started calling the company _Project Freelancer_ instead.

+x+

There are two things you see immediately following the collection of dogtags now cascading out of Smith’s hand (and Maroon, as you’ve taken to calling her, jogging back to where Volleyball stirs). The first is the New Republic Leader, Kimball, and General Doyle entrenched in an argument that sounds like it’s about Earth Imperialism. Privately, you hope Kimball wins. She’s easily the more competent leader – and she’s the one with more troops’ heads on platters of the two sides, and you above everyone else understand what she’ll go through.

The second thing you see is a woman that you’ve never seen before making a beeline for you, and it isn’t until you hear her call “Hello Agent!” that you turn on your heel and start speedwalking the other direction.

“Come on, Carolina,” Emily Grey calls in a singsong voice, and almost immediately she’s upon you, her hand on your shoulder to grind you to a halt with a grip you didn’t know such an unimposing woman could have. You jerk away from her hand but spin to face her, resigning yourself to whatever mind games she might see fit to foist upon you now that there’s no impending doom over your heads.

“Come on,” she urges you, and it takes a moment before you realize, dimly, that she’s leading you to a small medical station.

“I don’t need it,” you report sharply, shaking your head. “Epsilon’s monitoring my vitals. If something’s wrong, I’ll know.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Grey insists, and her grip is harsher now as she tugs you over to the side next to a long metal bench. “Anyway, if I don’t we could get sued, lots of legal jargon, I’m sure you understand. Please remove your helmet.”

 _Just go ahead and get it over with,_ Epsilon thinks at you, and with you a sigh you flop down and tug off your headgear. Your hair is long – too long; you haven’t had a chance to cut it recently, too busy tearing down everything your family ever stood for. You know there are bags hanging under your eyes like scars, and then there are scars themselves all across your face, from badass fights but also from ridiculous things like trying to put your helmet on backwards in an early morning daze. And there, flickering on your shoulder as always, Epsilon. It’s a bit comforting.

“Just give me a second to put on some gloves!” Grey chirps, bending down to reach into a portable cabinet and straightening out once more, tugging her wrist armor off and setting the clear latex gloves on top of it. You take a moment to inspect her figure now that it’s not hidden beneath a mountain of medical gear and battle armor. She’s not tiny, exactly, but she’s petite in a way that none of the soldiers you’ve ever met are, with flawless dark skin only one or two shades lighter than Kimball’s and most of her figure covered in black cloth. Some part of you wonders, distantly, if she wears that hijab beneath her helmet before you realize that’s probably incredibly rude and asking it would make you a piece of shit.

“What are you thinking?” Grey hums, cheery voice startling you out of your reverie. “Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you. Sometimes you just start staring off into space and it’s wonderful analyzing your thought processes!”

“…right,” you say, voice slow and deliberate. “Do you…do this with everyone else?”

“Do what?” she asks, preparing a flashlight before bending over you and pointing it at your ear, squinting inside.

“Psychoanalyzation,” you mutter, shifting sporadically as she circles you to check your other ear. “Do you ever pick anyone else’s brain, or is the honor just mine?”

She goes absolutely still for a moment. “It’s not just you,” she reassures, and her voice has dropped from its upbeat cadence. You almost want to mourn the loss.

“Really?” you deadpan, sarcasm dripping. Always fallback on the default humor, even if it means you’ll hate yourself for it later.

“Yup,” she says, systems restarting as she starts to move again, whirling to your front to peer into your eye. “It’s fascinating, really. Your teammates have the most unique insights.”

You pause. “…like what?” you finally force out, curiosity beating out your natural instinct to never say what you think never say what you feel never fuck up.

“Well, let me think.” She pauses inspecting you to tap her mouth with the flashlight. You look down to your hands, acutely aware of the urge to look anywhere but her eyes. “Your friend, Caboose?” You glance back up to find Grey pulling the frayed edges of her hijab out of her eyelashes, her gaze dead set on your face. “He thinks that we’re all in a videogame. And the orange guy, Grif, he keeps talking about how the sun never moves. How he only ever seems to go to the same locations with slight differences. How we can never drop guns.”

You shift uncomfortably and she restarts, smile alighting on her face. “But really, I’m more curious about what you think,” she says brightly. “So. Let’s talk, Agent.”

+x+

Your father took away Alpha in the dead of night while you were sleeping.

You cried. You shouted. But Father said he was going to work, that there were causes that needed him more than a lonely girl who couldn’t make friends.

Exact words, for those wondering.

And you found the memory of Alpha, years later, but this isn’t Alpha it’s Epsilon and he doesn’t know anything about _World Series 2250: Hologram Edition_ or how to calm down a fifteen year old when she can’t breathe because she tumbled over her words at school.

And that makes all the difference.

+x+

You tell her about this.

You tell her because you know if you don’t, she’ll demand it from you anyway. You tell her because the bags under her eyes match yours shade-for-shade and you tell her because her hijab has a rip through the top that looks like it’s been sewn by hand. You tell her because she’s beautiful and curved and you are so tired that you could collapse with the rest of these dead bodies and be satisfied, but she is life, she told the Reds and Blues to live.

And she listens. You don’t know why.

And you to go bed that night in a cot harder than the ground and think.

“Hey, Carolina,” Epsilon says.

“Hmm?” you hum in reply, voice a whisper. You managed a room for one. Epsilon is still hovering over your discarded armor in the corner, though; he prefers turning himself off.  
“What did you think about what Grey said?” he says, and he sounds so unsettled that you sit up to look over at him. He’s hovering cross legged on top of your helmet, chin resting on his fist. “About Caboose’s theory. That we’re all part of a video game. Or something.”

You pause to consider it. Then you drop off your elbow and slide back to lie down. “Doesn’t matter,” you say, serene.

“Doesn’t matter?” he repeats.

“Nope,” you agree, popping the p and rolling on your side so that the light he exudes won’t interrupt your sleep pattern. And it doesn’t matter. Not really.

Either way, you were always great at video games.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted 7 minutes after midnight on what (I think?) was the last actual day of Carolina week. I'm a rebel.
> 
> Very unedited, but I'm pumped about Carolina so I'll probably edit and repost it later when there isn't a time constraint. In the meantime, thar ya go!


End file.
